Image by John Hain from Pixabay
Self-rejection is preempting the rejection of others by rejecting yourself first. It is any form of telling yourself that you shouldn’t do or say X thing that is based on a negative perception of yourself; “I’m not good enough”, or “My thoughts/wants/needs don’t matter”.
I’m a master at self-rejection. Seriously. Black belt, PhD, 10,000 hours, top of the field, world champion rejection specialist. I’m not proud of it and I’m not bragging, but it’s a fact; I can self-reject with the best of them. There were several factors in my early life that engrained this in me, but I also think that most of us, regardless of upbringing, have to wrestle with this demon.
Growing up the oldest of seven children in a religious and politically conservative home taught me from an early age to deny myself. As a child, I took care of children. I could see that there wasn’t a lot of room for my needs, wants, or struggles so I learned to keep my problems to myself. At church on Sundays, I was told to have a “servant’s heart” and that serving others was the highest ideal. I was a child sacrificing myself for other children. I want to be clear, I’m not angry about my upbringing. I don’t blame my parents. I truly think they did the best they could under the circumstances. But I share this because I know it’s a story that many can relate to, at least in part. When you’re raised in this way, you learn to deny yourself, and over time self-denial can turn into self-devaluation and rejection.
I know that my path to self-rejection isn’t unique, and it’s also not the only one. There are many paths to self-rejection, but only one path out. It’s the same for everybody and it’s deceptively simple. You already know what I’m going to say. The only way to stop self-rejecting is to start self-accepting.
Now just give me a minute here. I can feel some of you heading for the exit. And I get that. The term self-acceptance can feel a bit wishy-washy, especially for us self-rejecting types. You might hear it and think, as I did, that it sounds like intellectual cover to be indulgently selfish, lazy, and unambitious. Some people certainly use it that way. But that’s a perversion, not the real thing. Using the guise of self-acceptance to justify a lack of aspiration to your potential is actually just self-rejection in a different wrapping. And it is certainly not what I plan to talk about here.
Still with me? I hope so.
Real self-acceptance is pursuing your fullest potential in spite of your limitations. When I say potential I mean this kind of thing: “True hell is when the person you are meets the person you could have been”. I mean becoming that person you know deep down that you’re capable of being. I mean potential in the realest, grittiest, most existential sense. I mean the kind of potential that causes you physical and psychological pain when you don’t meet it.
To pursue your potential, you must first learn to identify your patterns of self-rejection and deliberately act out against them. When you hear that voice in your head telling you to be less, that you are less, you’ve got to punch that fucker right in the face. Act out. Be more because you are more. Take violent, aggressive action toward your fullest potential.
This is easier said than done. Self-rejection is cunning. It hides in seemingly innocuous things like busy schedules and in objectively good things like loving relationships. It says things like “You’re too busy to go back to school” and “Your family needs you more than you need to give that business idea a chance”. Self-rejection’s goal is to protect you from pain and it perverts the good things in your life in service of this goal.
The path out of self-rejection is simple. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. For many of us, self-rejection feels hardwired in our brains. It’s been an operating system for so long, holding us captive, using mediocrity as a prophylactic to pain. But the irony is that preventing us from the pain of rejection has actually led us into an even worse agony. It has resulted in a torturous state of being wherein, not only have we not met our fullest potential, we haven’t even tried. Self-rejection is a hell of its own making.
I’m a master of self-rejection. But I’m learning to identify these patterns and to act out against them. It’s a work in progress, it requires daily vigilance, but one thing I’ve learned is that the effort I put in, even when it falls short, feels so much better than never trying in the first place.
MW 